DraftKings Inc. (NASDAQ:DKNG) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Shaun Kelley: Very helpful. And just for my follow-up, if we could talk about Jackpocket, the business today, our belief of this is probably is losing a little bit. Just trying to kind of get a sense of contribution as we move out and you actually consolidate this business probably more in 2025. What’s your sort of risk tolerance around what you’d be willing to invest or commit to this business, again, from a capital or loss perspective for those couple of years, while you want to ramp it? Because it seems like at least in the forecast that you’ve given, there’s a heck of a lot of organic growth that you can also attribute to this business. So help us balance those two and maybe losses or potential investment in 2025.

Jason Robins: Yes. First of all, regardless of when this closes, if it closes in 2024, it will not have a material impact. It will not cause us to change our guide, so let me be clear on that. We’re talking low single digit losses this year, and I think next year will be a positive year. I think the real question is how much, depending on timing of close, synergy can we realize next year and how much upside is there. But I don’t expect this to be any sort of drag. If anything, it’ll be, I think some pleasant upside, but we’re just hesitant to kind of commit to timing of synergies given that we don’t have a definitive date of close yet. So really, I think that’s the question for 2025 is, is it going to be slightly positive or are we going to be able to capture real meaningful synergies and start to accelerate some of the expected synergies that we have pegged for 2026 currently?

And that’s currently not something that we really can peg given we’re not certain of the closing timing. But just to be completely clear, this will not change our guide regardless of when we close in 2024, and this should be, if anything, a positive, certainly not a drag on EBITDA in 2025.

Shaun Kelley: Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Stephen Grambling with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Our next question comes from Stephen Grambling with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Our next question comes from Joe Greff with Morgan Stanley.

Joe Greff: This is Joe Greff with JP Morgan. Good morning, guys. Depending on how you want to answer this, what was the parlay mix in the fourth quarter, if you want to look at it by handle or GGR or a number of bets? What’s the assumption for parlay mix growth for 2024? And then maybe another way to answer the question too, if we look at Illinois, the only state that really details parlay activity, no matter how you cut it, you had a huge spike in what was reported for parlay bet mix or parlay handle mix in December versus November. Specifically, what’s going on there and is that representative of other states with respect to parlay activity?

Jason Robins: Yes, so for the fourth quarter, we were around 30%. We think there may have been an error in the Illinois report for December that overstated it, so that’s something we’re still digging into. But it was around 30% for the fourth quarter, and we expect continued increase this year. We haven’t put any exact numbers out for what we are forecasting parlay mix to be. I think some of this — somebody mentioned in-game betting earlier. There’s so many moving parts and people have to remember, as different levers for monetization are increasingly being adopted by consumers, you’re going to see lots of things moving. In-game betting, of course, is going to have less parlay mix just because of the rapid nature of it and therefore may have lower hold, but it’s still a very good thing for monetization.

So this is something we have to always keep in mind. Obviously, hold and parlay mix are big levers, but it’s not the only lever. Those are not the only levers that we have to increase monetization. But to answer your question, for Q4 is 30%, and we’re going to dig in and figure out what’s going on with the Illinois data, but that looks a little off to me.

Joe Greff: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Robin Farley with UBS. Your line is open.

Robin Farley: Great. Thanks. I wanted to go back to the Jackpocket acquisition for a moment. Just to kind of understand the opportunity, it sounds like there is already pretty significant overlap between the two customer bases. So is the idea that it’s the opportunity to penetrate even more than that significant amount or is it more in new states where Jackpockets operating and you’re not there yet, although that would seem like a relatively small number of states? So just wondering if you could help us think about, since there’s already so much overlap, where the incremental comes from. Thanks.

Jason Robins: Yes, it’s a great question. I mean, first, the fact that there’s overlap shows us that the customers are very similar type of customer. And we looked at a number of different data points to verify that from demographic data to other behavioral and psychographical stuff. I think the idea is that overlap was with zero CRM or actual effort put towards cross sell. And it’s nowhere near the cross sell that we’ve been able to achieve from OSB to iGaming. So we think there’s a ton of upside there with real meaningful effort put towards that. And that’s something we do best. We feel like we have the best in the industry cross-sell rates. And I think whether it’s BFS to OSB and iGaming or OSB to iGaming or any of the above, we’ve been able to achieve much higher cross-sell rates through our efforts.